Final Peace
by jbunyard
Summary: A short, introspective tale of Folken's perspective of certain key events of episode 25 of the series. Major spoilers if you haven't seen at least that far.


Insert standard disclaimer about Escaflowne not being my creation here. It's owned by quite a number of people, of whom I am not one. Also, the dialogwas derivedfrom Central Anime's translation of episode 25, which was done by Hiroaki Fukuda. This is my first Escaflowne fanfic, and there_was_ no Bandai official release of the series yet back when this story was written (late 1997 or early 1998), so if my terminology confuses anyone, that's probably why. Also, I like the flavor of some of the fansub translations(Phantom Moon vs Mystic Moon, Deceptant vs Doppleganger) better than the official version, so you'll likely see them continue into my other works. All characters, names, etc. are used without permission.

One warning, if you haven't seen up to episode 25 at the very least, some significant information will be revealed that you haven't found out about yet.

Comments and criticism are welcomed. Constructive criticism especially welcomed. Looking at it now, several years later, I'm not quite as happy with the story as I used to be, but unless there's a lot of demand for a revision, I think I'll turn my efforts to new stories instead of old.

**Final Peace  
**_A Tenkuu no Escaflowne fanfic featuring Folken Lakur de Fanel  
_by Jeremy Bunyard 

I have faced dragons without fear, but what I am about to do terrifies me. Would that this cup might pass from me, for I do not want to die. I long to change my fate, to find a way to have more than the mere twenty-five years I seem to have been allotted, and I could do so - it is within my power. Of that, I am almost certain. The same science with which I designed the stealth manteaux might be my salvation. But I will not make the attempt.

A paradox? Not at all, for it would mean leaving the fate of this world in Dornkirk's hands. I have a dream, you see, and I invested much of myself in its pursuit when I served Zaibach - when I believed my visions for a utopian Gaia to be the same as those of Dornkirk. I have since realized my error, realized that the inhumane methods he employed could not bring the ideal future we strove for. Naria, Eriya, you were the ones who showed me - you, who gave your lives with pleasure, content in the knowledge that you served me to the end, whose deaths were nothing but a useful experiment in _his_ eyes. My realization makes me no less responsible for what I have done to help bring Dornkirk to stand on the cusp of victory.

I could save myself, but my fate lies elsewhere. What I do now I do for Gaea, and I cannot…_will_ not...put my own life above that of my world.

"Van's suffering! I want to help Van!" a young woman's voice cries out as its owner bursts into my laboratory. Kanzaki Hitomi, the girl from the Phantom Moon. Her short, light brown hair is disheveled, and she is slightly out of breath. She is winded, but along with the worry and fear that shines like a beacon in her large, innocently expressive green-brown eyes, I can see that she is driven by a reserve of strength which goes far beyond what even her physical body possesses.

"I was certain you would come." She loves my brother, and he her. That love had brought them together when worlds separated them.

Yet another reason why I will not change the fate that awaits me.

"But...I saw...Folken...You might die in Zaibach, Folken!" Concern fills her voice, fear... for me, who had been her enemy such a short span of time ago. When I left Zaibach, I was regarded with suspicion and mistrust by my new allies; I was a necessary evil because of my knowledge, but certainly not a friend. She had placed her trust in me, as she told me, for if she didn't trust, she wouldn't be trusted. Her courage, her faith, moved me; I could see why Van was willing to endure so much to protect her.

"You don't need to worry about that," I reassure her. "I don't have much time left. A reversal of fortune is shortening my life." I slide my shirt over my head that I might sprout the wings my brother and I share -the mark of the blood which flows in our veins: the blood of the Dragon Clan, the descendants of Atlantis. A shower of black feathers drift to the ground as I spread those wings to their full span. "These dark wings attest to that."

"Dark wings..." she echoes, her shock evident in the widening of her eyes, the slight dropping of her jaw. She had seen them once before, in Fanelia, but had not realized then the significance of their hue.

Angels, Hitomi first called my people. If so, then my black wings are only just, for if once I was an angel, I have certainly fallen far.

"I will atone for the sin of serving Dornkirk with my life. That is my fate." I allow none of my fear, none of my regret, to show. I do not wish to make things any more difficult for the girl; she has already endured more than ever should have been asked of her. I will not add my burden to her own. She would all too readily take it upon herself - that is her strength, and her vulnerability.

"That's not right! I'll change such a sad fate!" She clutches at her pendant, and the pink stone catches fire from within. She seeks to harness the power of her wish, the power of Atlantis...to save me? For a second time, her compassion moves me, even if her will is pulled awry, reacting with the machinery I had taken from the Vione. The results she produce are nearly completely in opposition to her intentions - the column of light springs into being. I had planned on using the machines to open it later, when she wasn't nearby. She had asked me before to take her to Zaibach, that she could talk with Dornkirk, reason with him. I had refused, my plan to go alone, my goal less innocent.

"They have arrived," an all-too-familiar voice booms out. The voice of Zaibach - Dornkirk.

"Where are we?" answers a disoriented voice from behind me. Damn! But even as I curse unwittingly involving Hitomi further, I wonder at the power in the girl, that all her desires are granted. Will the last come to pass as well? Am I somehow to be saved? My will to live exerts itself in a wild surge of desperate hope.

"Everything is in place," Dornkirk's voice continues, disregarding her question entirely. "All the elements are in my hands. It is time to fully activate the Fate Redirector. Everything is going as I wish." I can hear the gloating beneath his words, the supreme confidence of victory in hand.

"Your wish..." I ask, uncomprehending. Suddenly, all the niggling doubts I had shoved aside set upon me as one, assaulting my previously unassailable conviction that I _would_ succeed. Could Dornkirk have planned for even this...?

"Yes. I guided fate so that you would bring the girl from the Phantom Moon here."

I am stunned for a moment, staring in open-mouthed shock, but then my righteousness - and my anger - returns. I _must_ succeed! The fate of Gaea...my brother's life... Hitomi... She is the key to his redirection of fate; I am but the tool with which he acquired her. I know then that Hitomi's last wish cannot be granted...and I am only mildly surprised that I feel no regret. There is no reasoning with Dornkirk; there is only one thing that will stop him: the fate that is to come, the fate that is justly mine. There is no way I will leave Zaibach alive after what I am about to do. "How much are you going to twist fate?" I growl, furious. He has used me again!

He has used me, just as he did the first time we met, when he gave me this mechanical arm to replace the one that the fire dragon took from me so long ago. I should have seen him for what he was back then. _This_ was Dornkirk's utopia - Gaea, free from war and hatred and killing. Equally free from anything else that makes us who we are. Replaced with the cold, precise efficiency of steel. Automatons, utterly inhuman.

"Stupid question," he answers. "You know what I think, don't you?"

I fight to keep my fury in check, with only limited success. "Then you know of my determination."

"You came to kill me, did you not? Go ahead, do it! There is no one to stop you!" The great machine which is the heart of Zaibach whirs to life, bringing the ancient, withered body of Dornkirk out into the open, unprotected by the many life-support systems which have sustained him far beyond any normal human lifespan. He opens his arms, as if to welcome me - death, his personal dark angel - to him with an embrace.

"Folken..."

Hitomi. She must feel the hatred radiating from me, see it in the tautness of my every muscle, in the grimace that has contorted the normally placid features of my face. She puts her hand on my shoulder, a gentle attempt at restraining me, but I jerk it away.

"Come on, Folken!" He mocks even my resolve, and that is the last straw. My anger swells, consumes me.

"Folken, don't!" Hitomi shouts, but I am beyond hearing.

"You're insane!" I scream at him, the rising tide of my fury lifting me into the air as I draw my sword. Always before when I have flown, I have felt the exhilaration that comes with the freedom of being able to break the bonds of the earth. This time, the exhilaration is of another sort - one in which my enemy is before me, awaiting only the final blow to be vanquished, and whose destruction - by _my_ hand - will mean the safety of all I hold dear. This dragon will not escape, leaving my broken body behind. I will kill this dragon!

My vision is clouded by a red haze and my ears overwhelmed by the pounding of thunder in my head as I land atop the great machine, as I bring my sword down and cleave the unresisting, decrepit husk of Dornkirk in two with a single stroke.

He erupts in a geyser of viscous green fluid; not even his blood remains that of a human - nothing more than fate-enhanced, life preserving fluid. He was as much machine as man, if not more. A dark reminder of what I, myself, might have become.

A pain in my chest shatters the grip my hatred holds on me; the tide of my rage has crashed and ebbed, leaving me to lie spent amid the rocks of the shore. The tip of my sword had broken on the machine as I struck Dornkirk and lodged itself near my heart. Suddenly, free from my rage, a clarity that I had not known since the first time I stared into the eyes of a fire dragon with nothing save acceptance, descends upon me.

"I see...this is the center of redirecting fate...where action and reaction are at their strongest." I see now the true enormity of my sins. The power of Atlantis, the power to redirect fate, is the power of wishes. What is a wish, but the incarnation of desire? I, who had told Van how hatred and fear begot nothing save violence and war, had allowed my own desire for vengeance on Dornkirk to overcome me. Here, where by killing Dornkirk I was just as surely killing myself. Where my actions, my hatred, would be magnified a thousandfold and projected outward to consume all of Gaea.

o o o o o o o o o

I think I would have given in to despair just then, as I started to fall backward, the wound to my chest condemning me to a slow but certain death, able to do little more than watch as the destiny Dornkirk and I had created unfolded. Had I done so, all would have been lost, for the fate being created would have become absolute - hatred and violence leading inevitably to despair and death.

Instead, I saw a vision. Perhaps something like what Hitomi must see, a vision of what had been, and of what might be.

Escaflowne, with Van astride the magnificent dragon, soaring to the heavens - pushing higher, even when he rose above the very winds upon which he rode, determined that no distance, not even the vast gulf between Gaea and the Phantom Moon itself, would keep him from his love. And so, when the column of light once again bridged that gulf, Kanzaki Hitomi and my brother were reunited.

Hope filled the void where despair had so nearly taken root. "But the war will end. I wish true peace to Gaea."

And I knew my wish would become reality. I had told Dornkirk not long before that the Dragon lacked courage, but no longer. In the face of such determination as his, in the face of such potent love, nothing as small and petty as hatred could even hope to be all-consuming.

o o o o o o o o o

Now I watch, as if from outside myself, as my body topples, as it smashes against the great machine before taking its final, long descent to the ground below, limp wings no longer able to catch the winds. At the same time, more real to me than my falling form, I can see my brother guiding Escaflowne through what remains of the battlefield.

"Van..." I call out to him. There is so much I still want to say, so much that I have never been able to tell him. So much pain between us that we have yet to overcome. In that moment, I willed that he know all I had left unsaid - all my hopes, my dreams, my regret for all the time we never had together. I willed him know that all I have done these past ten years was that we might see the ideal future, together. How much he hears I cannot say; at least some, I think...I hope.

Dimly, in the background, I am aware of Hitomi's voice, shouting my name.

Gradually, the vision fades. I can no longer feel either Van or Hitomi. But my dream for Gaea will be safe, carried on the wings of a white dragon, and that is enough, as the darkness enfolds me.

**FIN**


End file.
